In a space of just two days, Mumbai airport authorities received a dual shock.

Virgin Atlantic is suspending its London Mumbai service from May 3rd, while Finnair will suspend its Helsinki Mumbai service by mid May.

Clearly the economic woes are playing havoc. The Mumbai London route has excess capacity with British Airways, Jet Airways, and Kingfisher Airlines operating non-stops, and Emirates operating five daily flights via Dubai. Finnair though, is still targeting flights to Chennai and/or Bangalore, to capture the tech industry traffic.

Thai Airways International has announced it will stop using the old Don Mueang airport at Bangkok from end of March. It will operate all flights from the new Suvarnabhumi Airport also at Bangkok.

Thai Airways has been under tremendous financial pressure, and the state-owned carrier is expected to save about $16.5 million annually in salaries and operational costs.

Thai said it would inform the public regarding the move by March 15 to prevent confusion among passengers over the relocation of flights.

The airline's ground equipment at Don Mueang will be removed beginning next Friday March 13th, and only chartered flights will continue to use the old airport.

Thai could still use Don Mueang in case an emergency landing is needed and if the new Suvarnabhumi airport is unavailable. By declaring Don Mueang as an alternate airport, the carrier is also expected to save fuel costs for its short distance (less than 1 hour) flights.

The Indian Civil Aviation ministry can learn a lesson from this move for the old airports at Bangalore (HAL) and Hyderabad (Begumpet) and help save Indian carriers some fuel.

Saturday morning, still shocked by the crash of the Saras VT-XRM, got up early morning to drive to the Bengaluru International Airport for some plane spotting along with Photoyogi.

Took photos both morning and evening. Even managed the Emirates A330-200 which comes to Bangalore only once a week.

I hope you enjoy. Taking the images, then selecting, cropping, balancing, editing, researching, and uploading, took me the whole weekend.

The original album with the high resolution images is here on Flickr.

As always, your comments are requested, and welcomed.